Becoming

I’m starting a new category with this post: “Becoming Worse,” because that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks. I could summarize things quite accurately by saying, if it was good for me I didn’t do it and if it was bad for me I did it.

My progressive exercise program has transitioned from walking twice a day to walking once a day to stationary-biking once a day to basically nothing.

As I experimented with taking less and less insulin and finding that doing so did not immediately send my blood sugar levels skyrocketing, I gradually convinced myself that I didn’t need any at all. It was a small step from taking no insulin to doing no blood glucose monitoring. And with that check on my body’s response to what I was putting into it out of the way, I began to feel more and more at liberty to indulge all those food cravings that had never diminished.

About the only thing I haven’t done is start smoking again. And to be frank, in the past couple of days I’ve had some cravings along those lines for the first time in months!

I’m getting very much out of control, and the effects (while somewhat subtle) are significant enough to already see.

Here are the numbers.

My surgery was on 15 March 2006, about six and a half weeks ago. I weighed about 305. Immediately after surgery my weight went as high as 315 due to edema. I came home at 299, and watched it steadily drop (with the assistance of the diuretic HCTZ) down as low as 281. This morning it was 291.6. Two hundred ninety-one point six. And, no, that’s not some sudden abberent overnight spike. It’s been edging back upward, a little bit almost every day, for the past three weeks or more.

My blood pressure has also been going up, daily, during these last couple of week or so… as high as 190 over 118. My cardiologist had made some changes in my hypertension medication recently, but I strongly suspect that my food indulgences are more to blame.

I have to regain control. Either that or I should simply tell Lara that I’ve decided being lazy and bingeing on all the wrong foods mean more to me that trying to get healthy enough to be around for a few more years.

It’s extremely frustrating, intensely depressing. And how have I always dealt with emotional turmoil? By feeding my fat face. I have to stop, but it’s as if I don’t know how to stop… which to anyone else I’m sure sounds like a cop-out. I feel that I’m reaching a critical point in a gravely serious situation. I cannot afford to ignore this, to back-burner this. If I go on auto-pilot I know what the outcome will be.